The concept of ‘mood food’ is something I have been well aware of for while, but haven’t always indulged in, but the key point being that the mind needs nourishment just as much as the body. I’ve already got my work pretty well cut out over the next few weeks, so to fit in half an hour of reading would initially seem like a luxury, until it is broken down into three quick chunks of 10 minutes at the start of each day, over lunch and in the evening.

But even if you don’t like reading, good music can elevate the mood even quicker than text, and any music has to be better than the constant stream of bad news which so many news stations like to broadcast.

So I decided I’d head towards the station, and catch the train one stop to Canley. If you are a ‘normal’ walker just wanting to get from A to B, then nothing could be more pointless! Aside from ‘wasting’ money on a train ticket (well, actually not much more than jumping on the bus), and waiting for the train (a big five minutes, I wouldn’t have bothered if one wasn’t due), the train doesn’t actually get you any closer to my house. I live roughly the same distance from Coventry and Canley stations.

So why take the train at all? Shouldn’t I just go to London, and take the District Line to Barking? Well actually, no. To my mindset, this seemingly pointless journey made perfect sense. Firstly, it gave me somewhere to finish my lunch – I didn’t want to walk with it, and as someone who spends hours in front of a computer, I like to get out when I can. But more important than that (and no Tom-Tom, dick or Harry will ever tell you this), it is quite simply a much nicer walk. So instead of 15 minutes of boredom, I had 15 minutes of walking through the park.

Not to mention the fact that I am a total anorak for trains, but I still didn’t get my question answered about the ‘Class 351/2’s’ – that’s for another blog at another time – and it really isn’t that geeky, there is a genuine reason for wanting to know. I’m sure you can’t wait to find out!

Now back to work.

The analogy with flying comes from the fact that I run an aviation related travel website, so there was a simple analogy for dividing the day up into 7 different phases, based around preparing for a flight, taking off, crusing and then landing safely at the end. This was all nice in theory, but let’s just say there’s been some turbulence in the meantime, some of it being far more severe than I was ever expecting.

But now, things are starting to head back on an even keel (sorry, should be sticking to flying rather than nautical metaphors, but sod it, this is a blog not a novel), and I want to really even it all out and try and cruise as smoothly as possible. Yet just as things seem to get back in place, something breaks, and I’m back to the start – or at least I am undoing a lot of the progress.

So the main idea of having this blog has to be to create some form of online interaction, where I can stay motivated enough to keep a focus. One way of doing this is to post open comments about the feelings I go through, and to invite other people to share their experiences. I hope to get enough of a following to give me something to log back into each day, so please stick around.

So I hope to do a bit of tidying up, and then get back into the swing of things over the next few weeks. Watch this space!